Tuesday, March 13, 2007

MPH Happenings for March

MPH Writers Circle resumes this month with an interesting session this Saturday(17th), 11-1p.m. in the Booker Room of the 1 Utama branch. The focus is going to be writing memoirs and autobiographies.

The first guest speaker is Larry Parr who is co-author of business tycoon Tan Chin Nam's Never Say I Assume! (A whole lot of articles from the Star and about Tan Chin Nam have been archived here.)

The other is Balan Moses. You may have already seen Brickfields: A Place, A Time, A Memory in the bookshops. I bought it the other day at the MPH Warehouse sale and have been enjoying it. I particularly enjoy the way that he combines the story of this area of the city with personal anecdote, photographs and charming sketches.

I must add that -I'm very fond of Brickfields, and got to know the area when I was supervising my students on teaching practice. Sometimes I had a long gap between the lesssons I had to observe and wandered around appreciating the food (wonderful banana leaf!), the green spaces, the architecture of the "100 Quarters" in Jalan Rozario - sturdy housing built by the British, and the general "Indianess" of the area. I also used to love to visit Skoob when my favourite secondhand bookshop was still in that area. I've been fascinated to find out about the history of the various buildings from Balan's book.

The area is changing so fast now, with office blocks and condominiums,
luxury hotels and KL Sentral station, the main city transport hub, so the book captures a slice of the past before - sadly - it disappears forever.

Well, on Saturday, I'm going to be moderating the session, so I hope to see some of you there!

This is also a suitable point, I think, to put up an ad for the second Breakfast Club the following Saturday (24th) when Lydia Teh (Life's Like That) and Xeus (Dark City) will be slugging it out at MPH Bangsar Village II. (Isn't Kenny's poster great?)

5 comments:

Kenny Mah said...

Dear Sharon,

I've got a BodyBalance class around that time but will try to swing by once it's over. You guys will still hang around for a bit, I hope.

Love that bit about Lydia and Xeus slugging it out, heh.

P.S. Since my blog got hit by the same persistent spammer again, and this time used another of my blogpal's name, I'm now moderating comments on my blog, and when I comment on Blogger blogs like yours I will sign in with my Blogger account so you can tell it's me from the picture and the blog url (lifeforbeginners.blogspot.com which redirects to my Wordpress blog).

A bit troublesome but the last time I want is the spammer to come and disturb my blog-friends. I so understand how you feel now when someone stole content off your site a while ago. Don't these people have better things to do?

bibliobibuli said...

your spammer is obviously engaged in a personal vendetta with you ... for whatever warped reasons

the content stealer was nicking stuff for commericial gain

but whatever - it makes one feel violated

suggest you get the guys IP (pay for a sitemeter which records the whole IP) and then report abuse to his provider. i've found this effective in the past.

and we will still be around even if you come late sat. i still feel guilty i haven't done body balance in a while. where are you teaching it?

Kenny Mah said...

I have gotten the IP recorded, just wondering how far I want to pursue it. On the bright side, visitors to my blog are obviously as angered by this as I am, if not more, so that should give the spammer a rather strong hint to get lost.

As for BodyBalance, I'm not teaching it yet. I'm still in the initial stages. I'll be doing what is called shadowing a veteran instructor on stage before I teach a class on my own. I'll let you know when the time comes... ;)

bibliobibuli said...

kenny - it does no harm to report it. your site meter will tell you who the provider is. when i complained to telekom i saw that they came by my blog and read the offending pages very quickly.

you can also use the IP number to do a WHOIS search

i've also found that googling the IP number sometimes gives you clues that identifies the culprit (sneaky aren't i???). i was able to pinpoint one obnoxious commentator via comments left on a bulletin board with the same IP number. he'd claimed to be a disgruntled chinese guy living overseas, but was actually a college student in kedah and probably not chinese.

the bodybalance thing - come and work in my gym (in centerpoint) when you qualify

Kenny Mah said...

Wow --- I didn't know you could do so much with just the IP. Thanks for the advice! :)

As for your gym --- will do! ;)